San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
– 12 December 2010,
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
), was an American
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
and writer of
military history
Military history is the study of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, cultures and economies thereof, as well as the resulting changes to local and international relationships.
Professional historians norma ...
books. He studied at the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
in
Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
, served in the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
from 1943 to 1946, and completed his studies at
Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
with a
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
in
Political Science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
. At the end of his life, Dan Kurzman lived in
North Bergen
North Bergen is a township in the northern part of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the township had a total population of 63,361. The township was founded in 1843. It was much diminished in territory by a ...
(
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
) with his wife, Florence. He died December 12, 2010, at the age of 88, in Manhattan. (His wife had died the previous year.)
Career
In the early 1950s, Kurzman worked in Europe and in
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
for American newspapers and news agencies, thereafter becoming
correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or commentator for a magazine, or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, locati ...
of the
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
in
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
. In 1960, he published his first political book, a biography of the
Japanese Prime Minister
The prime minister of Japan ( Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of Stat ...
,
Nobusuke Kishi
was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960.
Known for his exploitative rule of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Northeast China in the 1930s, Kishi was nicknamed the "Monster of the Shō ...
. In the 1960s, Kurzman worked as a foreign policy correspondent for ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''. In 1965 he received the
George Polk Award
The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the award ...
for external reporting.
Later in life, he left the Washington Post and focused on researching and writing
Modern History
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
, especially military history non-fiction. In 1980 he received the
Cornelius Ryan Award
The Cornelius Ryan Award is given for "best nonfiction book on international affairs" by the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC). To be eligible for this literary award a book must be published "in the US or by a US based company or distributed ...
. A Polish-Israeli research team have suggested that much of what Kurzman wrote about the
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
was actually tainted by the personal testimony of unreliable Polish witnesses who deliberately magnified their own role in wartime Warsaw - most notably, Henryk Iwanski. Dariusz Libionka and Laurence Weinbaum suggest that Kurzman accepted the account of Iwanski (who presented himself as a hero) uncritically, and that Iwanski's testimony should be treated as
confabulation
In psychology, confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage (especially aneurysm in the a ...
.
Works
* ''Kishi and Japan: The Search for the Sun'', New York: Obolensky, 1960 (dt.:''Japan is looking for new ways: the political and economic development in the 20th century'', München: Beck 1961)
* ''Subversion of the Innocents: Patterns of Communist Penetration in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia'', New York: Random House 1963
* ''Santo Domingo: Revolt of the Damned: the Eyewitness, Detailed, Inside Account of the Dominican Revolution'', New York: GP Putnam 1965
* ''Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War'', New York : World Pub. Co., 1970
* ''The Race for Rome'', Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1975, (Ger.:''If Rome: the battle for the Eternal City'' in 1944, Munich: Bertelsmann, 1978, )
* ''The Bravest Battle: the Twenty-Eight Days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising'', New York: Putnam, 1976, (Ger.:''Insurrection: the last days of the Warsaw ghetto ' ', Munich: Bertelsmann, 1979, )
* ''Miracle of November: Madrid's Epic Stand, 1936'', New York: Putnam, 1980, (Ger.:''The November surprise: the battle for Madrid, the fall of 1936''; Munich: Heyne, 1982, )
* ''Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire'', New York: Simon and Schuster 1983,
* ''Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima'', New York etc.: McGraw-Hill 1985,
* ''A Killing Wind: Inside Union Carbide and the Bhopal Catastrophe'', New York ''et al.'' McGraw-Hill 1987,
* ''Fatal Voyage: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis'', New York: Atheneum, 1990,
* ''Left to Die: the Tragedy of the USS Juneau,'', New York ''et al.'' : Pocket Books,
* ''Blood and Water: Sabotaging Hitler's Bomb'', New York: Holt, 1997,
* ''Soldier of Peace: The Life of Yitzhak Rabin, 1922 - 1995'', New York: HarperCollins 1998,
* ''Disaster! : The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906'', New York: Perennial 2002,
* ''No Greater Glory: The Four Immortal Chaplains of World War II and the Sinking of the Dorchester'', New York: Random House 2004,
* ''A Special Mission: Hitler's Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII'', Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2007,